Standard Chartered projects $4T in tokenized assets by end-2028, with DeFi protocols primary beneficiaries

Standard Chartered projects that $4 trillion in tokenized assets will be onchain by the end of 2028, equally split between stablecoins and real-world assets, with well-established decentralized finance protocols positioned to capture the bulk of the resulting throughput.

The projection consolidates two forecasts that Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, has maintained separately. He foresees a $2 trillion stablecoin supply target and a $2 trillion tokenized RWA market, both by end-2028, as The Block has previously reported.

Composability

The bank's central argument rests on composability, a structural property of DeFi that Kendrick argues "makes 1 + 1 = 3" — with no direct equivalent in traditional finance.

On a shared ledger, a single position can simultaneously earn yield, serve as collateral, and remain fully liquid. "This is not possible off-chain," Kendrick wrote. Achieving the same multi-use profile in traditional finance requires splitting capital across separate venues and intermediaries, each carrying its own time and cost.

BlackRock's BUIDL, a tokenized U.S. Treasury money-market fund with roughly $2.85 billion in assets under management, illustrates the concept in practice, per Kendrick’s telling.

The fund simultaneously earns around 4% Treasury yield, converts to sBUIDL for DeFi compatibility, serves as collateral on lending protocols, trades around the clock, and acts as core reserve collateral for Ethena's USDtb and Ondo's OUSG — all without requiring bilateral integrations.

There are currently roughly 1,000 times more assets offchain than onchain, according to the note.

Kendrick believes tokenizing institutional-grade assets is the most likely source of the next leg of growth, with token prices for protocols that can scale safely and efficiently set to benefit most. TradFi operators moving assets onchain will favor established players with strong risk metrics, Kendrick wrote.

Institutional adoption

That integration is already visible in the data. The largest DeFi lending protocol, Aave, has ranked as high as 38th against U.S. banks by assets, with onchain stablecoin lending volume running at $1.5 billion to $2 billion per day and average loan sizes increasing, according to the note.

The Coinbase-Morpho bitcoin lending product also illustrates how TradFi institutions are plugging into DeFi as back-end infrastructure rather than building from scratch.

Coinbase handles the front end and custody, while Morpho provides the lending logic, liquidation engine, and capital pool. The product carries roughly $1.75 billion in loans across 22,000 borrowers.

Standard Chartered reaffirmed its $2 trillion RWA forecast in April after a DeFi exploit rattled markets, arguing the sector was "bent, not broken," as The Block reported. Kendrick views passage of the Clarity Act as the most significant near-term catalyst for accelerating the shift from traditional rails to DeFi.